


Finale

by SpaceSealAU



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 13:12:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12558124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceSealAU/pseuds/SpaceSealAU
Summary: All he wanted was to bring her back.  Using a spell from his book Hawkmoth finally had the chance to save his wife, but is the reward worth the price?





	Finale

The miraculous could bring her back.

In the back of the book it had said they could bring her back.  United together in one the miraculous could bring back a bearer, they could resurrect the peacock and bring back his wife, the only woman he had ever loved outside his mother.

A year ago, Pho had told him magic can only do so much.  He’d told him the dead were dead and  it was important to turn their attention to the living, but he’d hidden the jewels all the same.  They could work.  The gems could bring her back.

They had to bring her back.

He’d left her in the sea at Cape Horn, not strong enough to swim back to shore with her body in his arms and Nooroo unwilling to let him drown out there.  The enemy had been defeated but at what cost?  With only two holders left coughing and screaming on the beach there was hardly a force enough to protect the world.  With his wife dead in the sea there was no reason to protect it at all. 

And then the only one left who knew what had happened betrayed him.

The miraculous could bring her back, he knew they had to.  Why else would his friend have protected it with his life.  Why else would these children try to keep him from them.

Why wouldn’t they just let him save her?

He’d collected them all the same day, Ladybug running into his trap and Catnoir bounding behind her as though suicide were in fashion.  He’d never seen an akumatized man fight so hard.

He’d smartened up.  This time he’d aught a man as he stood perched on the edge of a bridge, knees trembling and fingers white around the wires.  He’d offered him a chance to turn his suffering into vengeance.  Ladybug and Catnoir may not want to kill a civilian, but when the enemy is willing to die it’s impossible to win.

He’d seen the boy’s face in a flash as the Chatnoir costume faded away, his soldier pulling the ring off of his finger.  He’d seen it, but the image didn’t seem to be in his memory, like his mind had snipped out the seconds of footage before letting it through to him.  He didn’t look again. 

It was going to be alright.  Once she was here, everything would be alright.

The spell had called for the destruction of the miraculous.  He didn’t hesitate, too far in now to back out, and when all the lights and magical effects were over he found himself only standing alone in the tower room, his mansion silent beneath him.

Adrian hadn’t come home from school that day.

He told Natalie he was at a friend’s house.  He wasn’t sure his assistant believed him.

It didn’t matter.

When the silence stretched on Gabriel put down the book, useless now, and blew out the candles.  He walked around his mansion, shutting the curtains and turning out lights, alone in the house for the first time in his life.  He locked the doors and windows, and turned on the lights on the front porch.  Then he’d gone to bed.

Adrian didn’t come home again.  The police came to his house a few days later, alerted by a concerned servant, but he’d told them his son had been sent away to rehab.  He produced receipts.  They’d looked at photos of the slim teen and accepted the story, though he knew it wouldn’t hold them forever.

Days turned into weeks.  He left the porch light on, blazing through the night as he lay in his room, still keeping to his side of the bed, listening for a footstep in the hall.

It was two months before he heard it. 

In the dark below his bedroom he heard a key in the lock.

Sitting up he listened, heart pounding and blood rushing in his ears.  The great front door swung open, squealing on it’s hinges, and he heard the unsteady pat of footsteps on the marble floor.  He cast aside the covers and stood, shaking in his nightshirt, and listened as the footsteps moved towards the great staircase.

Against the window he heard the rain falling quietly, a gentle patter that almost made the footsteps sound like a dream.  He heard them as they fell upon the first step.

Unable to stand the waiting he bolted from his room, throwing open the door and running out into the darkened corridor.  Over the topmost step he saw the mane of golden hair rise up unsteadily, hanging in wet curtains over her face.  Bits of kelp and leaves were stuck in it, hopelessly tangled, but even stained by rain and ocean he recognized the shade of it, the same golden hair she’d given their son.  She stumbled as she climbed and he could hear her ragged breath, wheezing as though there wasn’t enough air.

Gabriel froze, a horrific euphoria flowing into him as he recognized the blue dress, worn to tatters by the current.  He’d made her that dress to wear to a gathering eight years ago and she’d started to wear it everywhere.  She had hundreds in her closet but she said she liked the stitching on this one best.  He’d messed up in the back and a thread had looped up.  He tried to fix it after giving it to her but she wouldn’t let him.

Her hand was pale and wet on the bannister, leaving bits of foam, and he watched as she ascended the final step and stood, barefoot and tattered, in the light of the balcony doorway.  As she lifted her face to greet him Gabriel saw, and realized why Pho had told him that there were limits to the miraculous’ power.

His wife opened her mouth, lips picked away by fishes, and the pale hand raised and reached towards him, trembling.  She stumbled forward, and in the ruined eyes of the corpse he saw she was there, looking out at him with some unknowable desperation.

Gabriel raised his arms to meet her, shaking, and his wife collapsed into him.

It was going to be alright.

He felt her cold fingers grab his collar, pulling him down, and her exposed white teeth circled the vein of his throat.

She bit down.


End file.
